.ai TLD audit hub
Anguilla's ccTLD — repurposed in the 2020s as the canonical TLD for AI products.
The .ai TLD belongs to Anguilla, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean with a population of roughly 16,000 people. The local government has run the namespace since 1995, and prior to 2020 it sat in obscurity with a few thousand registrations. The post-2022 generative AI boom turned it into Anguilla's most lucrative export — domain fees now contribute a meaningful percentage of the territory's GDP. Registration is open globally, but unlike the legacy gTLDs there are quirks: minimum two-year registration is the standard, transfer locks are stricter, and the registry will sometimes hold names through dispute resolution that other registries would have released. Pricing is high — typically $80–$150 per year per domain — which has not stopped venture-backed AI companies from acquiring multi-domain portfolios in the namespace. SEO treats .ai as a generic gTLD with light Anguilla-bound geotargeting that you should override in Search Console if your audience is global. WHOIS data is sometimes thinner here than elsewhere because the registry historically did not enforce contact verification with the rigour of major gTLDs.